Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday October 27, 2010 @08:58AM
from the oh-yeah-that'll-happen dept.

T Murphy writes "The Supreme Court, when ruling that corporate and union political donations were allowed under free speech, assumed the source of the donation would be disclosed immediately under current donation laws. Due to loopholes, this has not been the case, eliminating the hoped-for transparency the Supreme Court ruled to be vital to democracy. Justice Kennedy, who sided with the majority on the ruling, has been called naive for his expectation that there would be greater transparency. In the meantime, campaign spending for House candidates alone is expected to reach $1.5 billion."

Kennedy has always attempted to be a fair mediator between the left and right impulses on the Court. But he really blew it on this one. His attempt at moderation in this case has taken an already out-of-control problem and made it much worse. This ruling will ensure that individual citizens are forevermore completely and totally drowned out in our government by corporate interests and their puppet foundations/non-profits. It was almost that way *already*, but now the big interests won't even have to *try* to hide their bribery. And, thanks to this, nothing short of a Constitutional amendment will ever stop corporate control of the government now (and good luck getting a 2/3's majority in a Congress owned by those corporations). Thanks Anthony!

Don't exaggerate. The Supreme Court is free to change their mind. They once ruled that segregation was legal, and then later changed their minds. Also take heat in the words of Thomas Jefferson (founder of the Democrat-republicans):

"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is

The Court did apparently make assumptions about the implications of a particular interpretation, but that's pretty much unavoidable. It speaks to the excessive complexity of our body of laws that they could not predict the outcome correctly.

While I disagree with the Court's ruling, the I do not find such severe fault as you do with the specific detail of meaning (but apparently failing to say in a binding way) "...following the same rules as everyone else".

I agree that this goes beyond naive. It is almost unbelievable that the Supreme Court would expect greater transparency where it is not explicitly required.

The only thing that makes it believable is the rash of other outrageous -- I will go so far as to say stupid -- Supreme Court decisions recently. I won't go into those, but even so I suspect the older members of the Supreme Court of gradually increasing senility, and the newer members of not having properly studied history... in addition to being overly-politically-motivated. Properly speaking, politics should carry no weight in court decisions. I know that is an idealistic dream, but still that is the ideal.

The thing that makes this ruling by the Supreme Court so outrageous on its face is that corporations simply don't have "rights". They have the legal privilege of acting in business matters as a person. That is all. They do not have a "right" to vote, they do not have a "right" to bear arms, they do not have a "right" to free speech! Sure, individuals within corporations have the right of free speech, but that is not the same thing, and restricting corporate donations does not infringe on that right.

The thing that makes this ruling by the Supreme Court so outrageous on its face is that corporations simply don't have "rights". They have the legal privilege of acting in business matters as a person. That is all.

Corporations, as an entity made up of people, have just as many rights to speech as any other "entity made up of people". Trade unions, for example.

If the National Education Association can dump tons of money into campaigns, and the SEIU (Oregon state employee union), and the UAW, then so should GM and other corporations be able to do so.

We currently have an incumbent who is painting his opponent as "bought and paid for" because his campaign got a few thousand from a company while the rest of his money came in $100 and similar donations from a large number of people. The incumbent, however, is backed by many of the large unions and has gotten the vast majority of his money from them. Bought and paid for, he says?

Now, you may claim that the unions are speaking with the voice of the members, but that is far from true. They speak with the voice of the leadership. The members are lucky if they can get their politically-based dues back without repercussions.

You're resting on the assumption that all groupings of people are created equal. I'm not sure I agree with that.

A corporation is given specific benefits and expected to abide by specific rules. It does not transiently acqurie all the rights or responsibilities of the indivuals who make it up, and in particular an individual's right to expression cannot be exercised by leveraging corporate assets to which he or she might have access.

Each corporation has a stated purpose for existing (though typically the f

You're resting on the assumption that all groupings of people are created equal.

Far from it. That is why I did not say one word about voluntary collaborations of people formed for specifically political purposes.

Unions are, for the most part, involuntary groupings formed based on employment or occupation, having no political purpose behind them. No, "collective bargaining" is not a political purpose, it is a commercial one.

... and in particular an individual's right to expression cannot be exercised by leveraging corporate assets to which he or she might have access.

Then the same rules should apply to an individual who has access to union dues. Those are just as much "corporate assets" as "company money", and in many cases less so. If I own a company then those corporate assets are, indeed, mine.

Each corporation has a stated purpose for existing...

Just as each union has.

... its assets are held to be used only in acceptable ways to advance that purpose,

That's your opinion, but not the law. I suggest you contact Ben and Jerry's and tell them that their donations to civic causes are not allowed because they do not fall within the scope of "ice cream business". Or Progressive Insurance, which has that name not because they sell progressive insurance.

... and the government has every right and interest in constraining what ways are acceptable.

Again, your opinion. In my opinion, the government has no right, and indeed no Constitutional authority, to tell me that I cannot spend the corporate assets of a company I own in any way I see fit. And for the potential pedant, I'll add "that is legal for any other citizen to spend his money."

Unions are, for the most part, involuntary groupings formed based on employment or occupation, having no political purpose behind them. No, "collective bargaining" is not a political purpose, it is a commercial one.

And that's why, at least in most states, unions are required by law to allow you to opt out of paying all union dues except the portion that directly contributes to its expenses in collective bargaining. To the extent that this is the case, any political contributions made by a union are to a la

Let's assume that the eventual abolishment of all unions has already happened...

If you are going to assume something that will never happen, we might as well assume that the deficit is gone, everyone makes a million dollars a year, and that there is peace and joy all over the planet with no hunger and no pestilence. Gitmo is closed, we're out of Iraq/Afghanistan completely, Hamas and Israel are buddies, nobody ties bombs to their children and sends them to the local markets or on the bus, and sea levels/c

I agree that corporations and unions should be treated the same for the purposes of political donations. However I think you will find that all but one union has revenues of less that $20M/yr and the vast majority can only dream of revenues in excess of $1M/yr. The one union with revenues in exess of $20M/yr rakes in $175M/yr which in the grand scheme of things is peanuts. The notion that they can compete on an equal footing with corporate donations in a $1.5B campaign is laughable, the average US CEO's remuneration of $8.5M dwarfs the yearly revenue of all but a handfull of unions.

Note: The source for the union figures is the US DOL, they have a web app where you can look these things up but I used my fragile memory since I can't be bothered finding the link.

You know that's an interesting point. It's a completely logical extension of "Corporations have Free Speech rights", to "Corporations have all first amendment rights". Corporations with "freedom of religious expression" make me a little scared (could be an interesting end run around civil rights legislation), but there's definitely a sufficient conflict between the individual rights of employees and the "rights" of the corporation to make that at least a less likely problem. It's not a big logical step f

Corporations with "freedom of religious expression" make me a little scared (could be an interesting end run around civil rights legislation),...

How so? Do you understand that there are corporations that are based on religion operations? How does the freedom of expression of a corporation in any way limit your civil rights?

It's not a big logical step from there to "Corporations have the right to bear arms". That's a scary idea.

How, exactly, does a "corporation" bear arms? Do you mean the people working at a corporation? Yes, they still have their individual rights. They do not lose their inalienable rights when they are hired.

Do you mean "bear arms as part of the corporate operation"? Briggs and Wells Fargo and other armored car services come to mind as corporations that "bear arms" in that sense. Do those corporations scare you? I don't believe that the individuals in that corporation bear arms in violation to laws applicable to individuals, but I can't testify to that. I'm rarely scared by a passing fellow with a gun and a moneybag. YMMV.

Or do you mean the corporation can "bear arms" in some other way? The Remington corporation comes to mind as a corporation that "bears arms" in a generic way -- boxes and boxes and boxes of guns sitting in warehouses. So too, Walmart, K-Mart, Bi-Mart, Gander Mountain, and any other retail corporation that stocks them.

Slippery slope arguments are often silly and convoluted, but in this case it's really *not* a huge jump from "Corporations have *this* Constitutional Right" to "Corporations have all Constitutional rights". One really does imply the other.

I am most disturbed not by the idea that corporations have the rights, but the idea that it is a "slippery slope" to think that having one right means one has them all. Yes, having one right means one has them all. That's part of them being "inalienable".

...(I mean, they're not cognizant sent entities with a single opinion),...

It is a rare human being who has "a single opinion", or even unchangeable opinions. If we make a "unified, consistent set of opinions" a litmus test for having rights, we've removed any concept of "inalienable" or even "rights".

And, if we make "unified opinion" a litmus test for "corporate" rights, we eliminate trade unions from the playing field of political speech, since the members of such unions rarely, if ever, have a single opinion about any political action.

Going beyond "naive" in this instance was not (I think) by Justice Kennedy.

Going beyond "naive" in this instance for some Justices/Lawyers may have been a crime against Democracy (not the law), IMO, probably in spirit and with intent "The US Constitution" was circumvented with great plutocratic hubris and gross intent to harm US with political/legal treason (but that is not against the law).

The Corporate States of America (CSA) is a plutocracy not a democracy. The CSA economy is corporate-welfare institutio

Did you read the same Citizens United ruling that I did? Did you read then Solicitor General Kagan's argument that basically said "Yeah, this legislation gives the Feds the power to ban books, but that's irrelevant because we would never do such a thing."? The 1st amendment says plainly enough that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. The old law prohibited Citizens United from publishing a film about a political candidate within a certain timeframe preceding a Federal election. Such a law is not compatible with the 1st amendment if free speech is to have any meaning.

McCain-Feingold kept "**corporations** and **unions** from using their __general treasury funds__ to make an "electioneering communication" or for "independent expenditures," defined as speech that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate and that is made independently of a candidate's campaign."

The Supreme Court said that corporations and unions must be treated as individuals. This is a radical extension of corporate power that is almost unknown in the rest of the

The Supreme Court said that corporations and unions must be treated as individuals. This is a radical extension of corporate power that is almost unknown in the rest of the world, and certainly something our Founders would be shocked to find.

Just because people chose to exercise their right to assemble into a group, does not mean they have to give up their other rights. The Corporation only has the powers of the individuals that own it.

>>>Just because people chose to exercise their right to assemble into a group, does not mean they have to give up their other rights. The Corporation only has the powers of the individuals that own it.

You are 100% correct.

However just because people form a group, doesn't mean the group acquires personhood. For example Microsoft employees retain their rights, but the actual microsoft, which is as inanimate as a building, should have no rights. If the owner of MS wants to speak let him speak as *hi

Not vote multiple times, but if the people of the assembled group wanted to base their vote on a collective decision, then there isn't anything that should stop such a thing. The campaign finance issue holds water in the same respect. The people of the group have allocated their resources and given control over those resources to a few elected leaders (the board). They trust the board to do good things with that money in order to act on their behalf and in their interest.

That used to be the case! A corporation, or really any group, was limited in the way it could fund a campaign. It could only give an amount equal to the limits of personal giving of each of its members, and they weren't allowed to give on their own outside of it. This SCOTUS ruling destroyed that!

>>>if the people of the assembled group wanted to base their vote on a collective decision, then there isn't anything that should stop such a thing.

But that is still Individuals exercising individual, Human rights.That doesn't mean the corporation should have the right to cast ~100,000 votes on behalf of its employees.Neither should said corporation have the right to hire lobbyists to speak on behalf of its employees.

If they employees want to hire lobbyists, let them do it on an individual basis, w

A 'business' does not meet the definition of such a group. A political action group is specifically created to champion the political agenda of it's members and it makes perfect sense that these should have the ability to do so as their members expressly joined such groups for that purpose, and donated money to such groups for that purpose.

A business on the other hand does not take it's employee's opinion into account when they spend corporate money on political action campaigns. I certainly can't tell my company where to spend it's money. I have no voice at all, other than taking a drastic step of leaving my job, and risking my own health and welfare to do so.

The ruling was bad, on all fronts. It is not free speech for a corporation to use it's coffers to 'speak' for employees who in turn have no control over where that money goes.

Not vote multiple times, but if the people of the assembled group wanted to base their vote on a collective decision, then there isn't anything that should stop such a thing. The campaign finance issue holds water in the same respect. The people of the group have allocated their resources and given control over those resources to a few elected leaders (the board). They trust the board to do good things with that money in order to act on their behalf and in their interest

if the people of the assembled group wanted to base their vote on a collective decision, then there isn't anything that should stop such a thing.

If people wanted to vote through the group, there is something that will stop it, however. I'm not an American, so I might be wrong regarding your laws, but you can't give your vote to the corporation and send it to vote for everyone. This right is not transferable. It would make sense that other rights, such as free speech, are also not transferable. If this was the case, you could do whatever you want, publish books and movies and so on, but corporations will not. I see no problem with this.

Until the 'owners' of a corporation can be imprisoned for crimes they are not equal to 'citizens' and should not get the same level of rights.

Actually, if a corporation commits crimes, the CEO, Officers and the BOARD of Directors should be held criminally responsible. I'm not talking about rogue employees, I'm talking about corporate policy and repeated actions.

Additionally, one MUST remember that Corporations are creations of the State. Giving them any "rights" diminishes the liberties of citizens and the

Actually, if a corporation commits crimes, the CEO, Officers and the BOARD of Directors should be held criminally responsible. I'm not talking about rogue employees, I'm talking about corporate policy and repeated actions.

Why should owners of the corporation be not liable?

If you really want corporate behavior to change, you've got to re-link the investors (owners) with the actions (and consequences of those actions) done by the corporation.

To clarify - in the situation we have today, the collective political power of the corporation's employees (which can number in the tens or hundreds of thousands) and to an extent its customers (in that the customers are ultimately funding the exercise) is wielded by the relatively few people who own the corporation. This not only gives them disproportionate political power, but in influencing the political decisions of its employees it effectively reduces the political influence of those same employees.

Here's a fun question for people who think corporations have 'rights': Corporations have to have stated businesses purposes that are authorized by the state.

The state can dissolve corporations that do not follow said purpose. In practice, they only do this to non-profits, as the stated purposes of for-profit businesses is generally 'make money', but in actuality they can do it to any corporation.

What if the state refused to allow such corporations to exist that either a) stated they were for using

Yes, actually she did [supremecourt.gov]. Start on page 64. She is arguing that the law DOES cover books but you don't need to worry about it because the Government has never tried to regulate books and if it did there would be grounds for a legal challenge. You'll forgive me if I don't find that argument very compelling.

Did you read the same Citizens United ruling that I did? Did you read then Solicitor General Kagan's argument that basically said "Yeah, this legislation gives the Feds the power to ban books, but that's irrelevant because we would never do such a thing."? The 1st amendment says plainly enough that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. The old law prohibited Citizens United from publishing a film about a political candidate within a certain timeframe preceding a Federal election. Such a law is not compatible with the 1st amendment if free speech is to have any meaning.

I laughed when I learned that Micheal Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11M was used to attack the old law. Under the old law, Fahrenheit could have been banned during the 30 days before the 2004 election as a form of electioneering.

It wasn't banned, of course, and that made arguing against the old law even easier because it suggested that the state could pick and choose what speech to ban and what speed to allow and that created a fear that the state under the old law would manipulate the political conversation.

The argument isn't over what "shall make no law" means, it's over what "freedom of speech" means. The common assumption, and what the 1st Am. almost certainly means, is that freedom of speech is a right of individuals, not corporations.

I don't give a good goddamn what was written over a century ago into a Supreme Court decision about a railroad company by a court clerk (who had, by an astonishing coincidence, a substantial financial interest in that same railroad company.) Corporations are not people, and

The intent was that Congress would not be in the position of regulating speech.

Why are you so afraid of unfettered speech anyway? Is your opinion of the American electorate so low that you think they need to be shielded from this speech and can't form their own opinions about it?

The intent was that Congress would not be in the position of regulating speech.

Why are you so afraid of unfettered speech anyway? Is your opinion of the American electorate so low that you think they need to be shielded from this speech and can't form their own opinions about it?

I see no reason to allow corporations to have the ability to speak on political issues. The individuals of that corporation have that right. The corporation itself is simply a legal shield created by the government for the purpose of facilitating commerce, and as such should not have the rights of a person.

Regular corporations would still not be permitted to donate to political influence activities.

So my local grocery store isn't allowed to publish a flier detailing how the new zoning law will impact them and their customers unless they go through the hassle of setting up a separate corporation for this purpose?

Imagine party A plans to make a law that would tax the ultra-wealthy more and give some tax breaks to middle and low income earners, but party B would like to do the opposite.

A few hundred millionaires can easily communicate and coordinate to make a company and write a 5 million USD check each to campaign against party A so that the law is stopped, because they know that this is less than half of what this law will cost them each year. And they can easily afford doing that.

Dude, the freedom of speech is not the same thing as the freedom to lie about your identity.

So you don't think that anonymous political speech is protected by the 1st amendment? Why aren't you posting under your real name then?

There's a difference between anonymous speech and deceptive speech. I have the right to free speech, but that doesn't give me the right to slander someone. Nor does it give me the right to lie to a judge or other state representative. Why should a corporation be allowed to be involved in politics at all? Every owner of the corporation has that individual right, but the corporation itself is a government-created entity that exists only as a liability shield for the shareholders of the corporation. I se

This ruling will ensure that individual citizens are forevermore completely and totally drowned out in our government by corporate interests and their puppet foundations/non-profits.

The individual citizen is always going to be drowned out in a democracy. The biggest gang wins. That what Democracy is.

Very few people have won elections without the help of large groups. People must form large groups to get anywhere. As a legal convenience, these groups become corporations by incorporating.

The AARP is a corporation. The NEA is a corporation. The AFL/CIO is a corporation. The NAACP is a corporation. They're all groups of like-minded people that would be nothing if they couldn't act together (and spend together) as a unit.

The problem is you're assuming the corporations are controlled by a large group.

I'm sure that in some cases, if not most, these decisions are ultimately made by one or a few with all the power of the many. Just because a corporation is composed of thousands of workers or owned by thousands of investors doesn't mean that these people have any control. Moreover, most of these corporations are not formed for political purposes or around political ideas.

I'd be surprised if I read a story of any of these million dollar corporations holding a vote amongst shareholders whether and to whom they should donate a political contribution.

The problem is still with the organization of corporations. The management isn't at fault, because they're just the hired guns doing the will of the owners (stockholders). The stockholders aren't at fault because there's so many of them you could never apportion blame, and they can't know the ins-and-outs of every action taken by the corporation. Basically, no one is to blame (officially...when Target donates 150k to a politician the CEO likes, everyone knows exactly who to go after...but how're you gonna fire him? If more than 50% of the stock is owned by institutional investors who only trade based on price, and he continues to make the price better, you can't get rid of him...)

which makes me wish the Supreme Court hadn't also given companies the same rights as individual citizens.
It is like they can have it both ways. At the heart a company is an idea and you can't throw an idea in jail. You can penalize it and put CEOs or more likely peons in jail, but you can't just close it down for yelling fire in a crowded theater.

Businesses have something approaching the full rights of a human being, except, as the quote goes "They (corporations) have no soul to save and they have no body to incarcerate."

Combine this with the ideas of limited liability, proprietary knowledge, and the common practice of boards of directors being friends with the executives they appoint, and what you have is a class of corporate management run amo

In today's world, an integral part of a democracy is the rule of law. And if the law says that sheep can't be dinner, then it shouldn't matter how many wolves there are because there's not going to be a vote.

Of course there's going to be a vote - a vote on laws (or rather, on politicians who write laws). If you have enough wolves, the law will just say that sheep are dinner.

Endorsing a candidate is fundamentally different from having the ability to run billions of dollars in ads, especially when the endorsement says "THE NEW YORK TIMES ENDORSES X CANDIDATE" and the ads say "Paid for by random mysterious group #50,982".

Tell me any reasonable way to parse the difference between the two that is *not* incredibly open to political abuse. Tell me how to keep the regulatory structure immune from every political lobbying group pressuring the justice department. Tell me what justifies giving some giant faceless corporations (the New York Times, Fox News, Time Warner) the right to make political statements and not others.

There is no clear line to draw and no clean way to draw it. This is why the first amendment exists - rather than risk creating a regulatory structure that is incredibly open to abuse, we open speech up to everyone and every thing and leave it up to the voter to parse out the bad speech.

Endorsing a canidate in by DEFINITION transparent. You have the newspaper company saying who it endorses and why.

I dont think anyone here has an issue with say....HP or Microsoft or BP or whomever running a commercial or renting newspaper space saying 'BP endorses this canidate because of X Y and Z. We do not like this other canidate because of A,B, and C.

The problem comes with shadow organizations, who are funded indirectly. The answer to that is fairly simple. If you are a company which is a subsidary of

The problem is getting results from spending small amounts of money. We're now in a situation where massive amounts have to be spent to bribe anyone.

Clearly it is an uphill battle to take the corrupting influence of money out of the political process.Given the ineffectiveness of controls on the cash going in, perhaps the public could be better served and more quickly so by changes limiting where the cash can go. Do away with paid radio/tv political ads entirely.

A corporation is not a person. In fact, a corporation is a government-created entity, which was created to explicitly avoid having responsibility. In the wake of CU, they've extended this shirking of responsibility to include secret funding of political campaigns.

There is nothing in the constitution which defines corporations as citizens with 1st amendment rights. That is an artifact of judicial decisions and law on the books. Get rid of corporations (which reducing liability for shareholders), or make the shareholders criminally liable for actions of the company and we can talk about giving corporations more rights. If you were to strictly interpret the constitiution, any group that took money from non-citizens should b

So express your support, verbal and material as an individual. If you want to cooperate with a bunch of buddies to do the same, you can do that too. Just don't incorporate. It's not that free speech isn't a right, it's that incorporation isn't a right. Incorporation is a tool the government created for specific purposes, it's not a natural right. Since it's an artificial construct, they get to define the scope, and if it's in the best interest of society for them to be apolitical that's fine. They can

I fail to understand how SCOTUS could be so short-sighted. When they made the ruling, I agreed with their judicial logic, but that was a case where very clearly the ruling was not in the good of the general population. I don't know how much transparency matters; if you can buy an election, you need not bother with appeasing the populace - you can just ignore it.

The bigger problem now is backsliding to the natural state collective of human affairs - tyranny by the minority. The rich get richer until they have all the power, individual rights are equated with capitalism so only the rich actually have them, and free enterprise boils down to "choosing" whether to slave away for a monopoly, or starve.

The Canadian election system limits campaign spending to roughly $20 million per major party. The full amount of money allowed in our election is somewhere around $60 million. It costs more to actually run the polling booths. We have a population roughly one tenth of the US. Taking a rough stab at it, you're spending $2.5 Billion for your midterm elections. Or about four times the amount per capita as us.

Additionally, in our system, a large percentage of that is publicly funded. And the maximum corporate donation is $1000. We have problems with corporate interests and lobbyists in Canada. You guys don't have a problem with it: you're OWNED by corporate interests.

Increasingly, it looks like the U.S. is a republic in name only. These groups spend money on advertising because they believe it's effective and they are probably right. Effectively, the United States is allowing it's wealthiest citizens to buy the laws they favor.

Most political advertising aims primarily at influencing swing voters - die-hard supporters of either party are unlikely to be affected.

That said, due to the "close call" nature of national elections in US, relatively few votes can often decide the outcome. So even with completely atrocious spending per affected vote, it may well be worth it.

To play devil's advocate here, if that's the case...what's their motivation? They've already been granted lifetime appointments, why would they need to give in to the demands/wishes of special interests or politicians?

The problem is not corporate/union donations to individuals, the problem is one of transparency. Focus on that and on closing the "loopholes" mentioned in the summary, rather than beating your chests about the supposed unfairness surrounding the act of individuals joining together to pool their resources for political change. Anything else is merely a red herring.

I see, so you think it's OK to limit someone's freedoms because they have more wealth than you? Please explain how that's right or fair. And please don't bother with inane utilitarian concepts of "the greater good". You aren't Jeremy Bentham and you're not going to make a more cogent argument than he ever could.

I'm going to say this again, and more clearly and forcefully: it is immoral to trample on one person's rights because you think other people will be somehow better off if you do so. The fact of the matter is, those people will not be better off as we all suffer when rights are sacrificed for convenience or good feelings.

I see, so you think it's OK to limit someone's freedoms because they have more wealth than you? Please explain how that's right or fair.

And an appeal to authority:

And please don't bother with inane utilitarian concepts of "the greater good". You aren't Jeremy Bentham and you're not going to make a more cogent argument than he ever could.

And now you conflate rights and money. It's fine that they are the same to you. Others disagree, and therefore your definition of "moral" will be different from theirs.

I'm going to say this again, and more clearly and forcefully: it is immoral to trample on one person's rights because you think other people will be somehow better off if you do so. The fact of the matter is, those people will not be better off as we all suffer when rights are sacrificed for convenience or good feelings.

You can be as "clear" and "forceful" as you like, but simply stating that it's true because you say so (or Bentham says so) is not gonna convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you.

We can trample rights as you say, and we do it all the time. It is neither moral or immoral, but refl

Well, if this id going to be a discussion of rights, please tell me how wealth (as opposed to immediate property, wealth - your stocks not your house) is a right and not a privilege given by the society. You aren't Ayn Rand, and I doubt you'll manage to make a more cogent argument than she ever could...
You see, the limitations on those privileges make a lot of sense once you understand this...

I see, so you think it's OK to limit someone's freedoms because they have more wealth than you?

Yep, that's what a society is. Always has been, always will be. Society is for the schumck that can't afford security guards, but can obey laws, contribute, and live better than a peasant. Society is for the middle class, and if you don't like it go start your own country, or move to the Mexican side of the border, that's close enough to lawlessness.

No, society is for the rich. It's hard to stay rich when you're paying for your own security. Society lets you offload that cost onto the lower classes through taxes. Maintaining the appearance of influence makes it a lot less likely that you'll need that security too.

It's that, for example, Microsoft could set up a shell group called "Concerned Citizens for Software Freedom" and funnel money into it to buy a million political ads that trashed a candidate running against a candidate they liked.

Microsoft could set up a shell group called "Concerned Citizens for Software Freedom" and funnel money into it to buy a million political ads that trashed a candidate running against a candidate they liked.

Easier fix: all funding must come from the gov't, in equal (and relatively small) amounts for each candidate. Offer each candidate who gets the required number of signatures to be on the ballot, a set amount of TV time, a set amount of ad money, and tell everyone else to butt the fuck out of the process.

As long as you can win by drowning your opponent in money, the system is fucked.

Easier fix: all funding must come from the gov't, in equal (and relatively small) amounts for each candidate. Offer each candidate who gets the required number of signatures to be on the ballot, a set amount of TV time, a set amount of ad money, and tell everyone else to butt the fuck out of the process.

I *like* this plan, and have always liked it, but it seems to run afoul of the first amendment. You can't prevent people (or, apparently, corporations) from endorsing candidates, and getting together in groups to form support coalitions for candidates, without stepping on their freedom of speech. Likewise, you can't stop them spending their money advertising in favor of a candidate, without stepping on the freedom of the press to print whatever they want (or are paid to print.) So how do we implement som

Every US election cycle, I get more proud of Canada. My latest warm fuzzy? There was a nice article in Maclean's (our Newsweek) a few months ago about Beverly Mclachlin, our Chief Justice for the last 10 years, and the various notable decisions of the Mclachlin court. It's only because of that article I know her name, and I can't name any of the other eight.

Whereas, just from news spillover, I can probably name most of the SCOTUS, because every confirmation and a dozen decisions every year are so politically charged. Polarized pitched battles seem to infuse every branch of the US governments, at every level. Quite frankly, it sounds exhausting.

Back in January 2010, Obama gave the State of the Union right after the Court handed down the Citizens United decision. Obama told Congress, with several of the Supremes sitting in the front row, that the decision would allow foreign corporations to influence US elections, which most Americans still realize is a terrible development. Justice Alito, who had just decided in the majority to allow corporations "free speech" by spending unlimited money in US political campaigning, was mad: he angrily mouthed [nydailynews.com] "not true". The corporate mass media attacked Obama for "picking on the justices" by warning Congress and "embarrassing" the court, but of course failed to examine whether it was true.

Less than a year later, we see it was totally true. We see that foreign corporations have invested huge amounts of money campaigning in the 2010 election. Republican candidates have gotten hundreds of $millions spent to elect them, sponsored by corporations [corpwatch.org] including many foreign ones. The "US" Chamber of Commerce (Inc.) collects money from lots of foreign corporations [thinkprogress.org], especially Indian ones that want US jobs shipped there, foreign banks like Credit Suisse and HSBC that want financial reform repealed, and even corporations owned by foreign kings, like the Emir of Bahrain. Foreign kings are spending more in US election campaigns than US citizens.

Whether you think that's OK or not (it is very not OK), Alito was totally wrong. And a jerk about it. Not surprising, since Alito was installed by Bush. Alito swore in his Senate confirmation hearings that he would respect established law, but his Citizens United decision overturned lots of established law, went against the basic understanding that corporations are not people, and recklessly unleashed foreign corporate power on US election campaigns.

He should be impeached. Then he'll be free to skip the State of the Union [wonkette.com] the way he plans to from now on because he can't stand criticism of his abominable rulings.

No, impeachment is a political institution, which is why it originates in the House and is decided in the Senate, with the only Judicial Branch involvement being the Chief Justice presiding over the Senate "trial", but with no jurisprudential power other than what the Congress votes to give them in the specific case.

Obama's "outrageous claims" in his SotU are now proven exactly true. But you Republicans don't care about the truth, or America's sovereignty. You care only about getting power, and using it for your corporate sponsors.

There is no room for even $1 spent in American elections by foreign corporations and foreign kings. Putting it in scare quotes doesn't change the unacceptable nature.

You Republicans love to talk about protecting the US from foreign influence, until it pays for your party to win elections. Aft

So what we need then is a group of people to run the country that properly represents it's citizens. We need the 20-somethings working alongside the 60-somethings. Why shouldn't our government be representative of age distribution too?

The fundamental problem is people actually paying attention to TV political ads. What we need is voting reform in the form of massive civics and logic education. Teach people to cast a vote based on their own research & conclusions and not an error laden, buzzword filled TV ad that plays on people's emotions.

I like this idea; unfortunately, logic and civics are widely known to have a liberal bias, so it would be very difficult to bring either of these into our public education system.